How many local stations does MOD have these days? I want to get a TV service mainly to practice Chinese. Someone said in one of the early posts in this thread that MOD has a lot less local stations than regular cable, is that still the case?

There seems to have been lots of changes to MOD recently. Haven't watched it in ages and turned it on today to notice that a lot of channels have now moved on to another package (hence, extra money required to keep viewing them). Channels such as Nick, some news channels, and even the educational channel which is free over an antenna have all gone.

I think for us LaoWai MOD is still better than cable, as long as you don’t care about HBO.

But the gap is narrowing with better choices on cable, and the recent loss of several channels, like BBC Entertainment, SYFY, and InConcerts channel. There are others that have gone, too. For Indian viewers, the loss of 225, Star Movies (India) with their bollywood classsics disappeared. Universal has also gone missing. The sports channels seem to be a rotating roster of channels… but I don’t watch them. Also, Al Jazeera & RT Today both disappeared a while back, weakening their news line up.

So the gap is narrowing slightly… As MOD starts to drive towards profitability, I think they will cut more international channels to save costs and replace with Taiwanese channels, Mainland channels & Korean to increase audience. The recent shake up of the channels on MOD is a sign that things are about to change even more. It’s the same with most maturing businesses (like EBAY, etc) who give up the niche markets that brought their initial success. I think CHT will drop the niche markets gradually. They’ve dropped numerous services that I liked too. The music streaming and radio streaming services were dropped ages ago. Their specialized programming looks like it’s going to be next.

I suspect that NETFLIX will take a large chunk out of their on-demand video services, too. Already, they’re trying to push annual packages, regular packages for movies & subscription efforts… but the range of movies is very limited compared to NETFLIX. They only really compete on ease of use, and first to market. Also the VOD tools are quite primitve, broken up into different segments (that make little or no sense), and search is chinese only.

Unfortunately, they were the early mover in Taiwan for On-Demand and TVIP. They also used to have decent movie packages, but if you subscribe for a while… it’s easy to see most of the movies you want… then there’s little added to the packages. End result: viewers only subscribe for a limited period. They were also early movers in HD, and still are #1 in the local market for breadth of HD choice.

However, they have been hobbled by the law, slow to manage change and adapt, and driven by a market that fixates on the price (not the quality)… meaning innovation is limited, patchy and of short duration.

We’ll see how it pans out. But I expect to go back to watching Cable TV in the next few years. Or switching entirely to TVIP from online vendors only.

Yes, I think they see it as an upsell if you want to watch movies, you almost always have to buy them via VOD. The movie channels are mostly lower quality, though CatchPlay isn’t too bad. I wish that World Cinema had English subtitles, since they often show movies in many different languages, with Chinese subtitles.

They also recently dropped TCM, VOA, and a couple of others, too.

HBO and Cinemax are available on all cable TV networks. HBO is Ch. 65. There are also other HBO channels available on digital cable TV networks. I believe all cable TV networks have that capability. for historical reasons, HBO wasn’t available on MOD (partly because MOD isn’t a cable TV network).

Since the opening up of legislation, some channels now broadcast across platforms, but some refuse to open up their service for whatever dumb-ass idea. TVBS, Eastern, HBO… to name a few of the networks whose agents don’t cross-license. It’s weird when you consider how many subscriptions MOD has! It’s doubly weird when you also realize that CHT actually has cable TV networks (in the south of the island) and a mobile network that broadcast live TVBS channels and Eastern programming (via their Hami Apps).

The end result is that: News programming for local news is weaker than the cable TV, movie choices are weaker because you’re kind of expected to use VOD services (even though the backcatalog is small), Japanese programming (popular here) isn’t as strong, and local drama is often backdated. Though sports TV is popular, there are THREE channels for golf, and so on…

The recent storm they created with mass expiring of deals/channel changes/channel moves/etc… at 6/30 is both a blessing and a curse for MOD. It means that they are now a significant player in the marketplace, but that arbitrary changes to their line up (unlike cable networks) affect people across Taiwan. So canceling contracts with popular TV channels causes national complaints, not just local ones that affect cable networks. Apparently, the NCC is investigating the changes.

Not sure what the difference is in the movies on MOD and cable. Whenever I watch cable (which is not often), my impression is that they are showing a similar selection of movies that are shown on MOD with the obvious exception of HBO productions. Is there a big cost difference?

Tech question for MOD: is there a way to have a wireless connection to the TV? We had a tech guy here yesterday for upgrading our internet speed + “free” MOD we didn’t previously have, but - if I understand things right - MOD would require running an Ethernet cable from one corner of our apartment (internet plug, in the computer room), to the far corner, where the TV is. And I really don’t want to run a cable like that. (At the moment all TV is wireless via an Apple TV box).

For that matter, we can mirror display from iPads or iPhones to the Apple TV - can MOD be accessed that way? Through a web browser or an iOS app?